A Series on the Phases of Building a Business
Behind the Build is an essay series I publish on Substack as Founder of XIII Collective Sports Group, LLC, an athlete representation and NIL strategizing agency. It is an honest, unfiltered account of what it actually looks like to build a business from the ground up, written from inside the process, not in retrospect.
The series maps six distinct phases of entrepreneurship: from the quiet uncertainty before my business had a name, through the courage it took to launch, the humbling reality of first clients, the unglamorous work of building systems, the identity shifts that growth demanded, and finally, the longer question of what it means to build something that lasts.
That context is not incidental to the series, yet it is central to it. The questions I sit with as a founder are not just operational. They are about what leadership looks like when you are building in a room that did not expect you to walk in. About what it means to grow a business on your own terms when the industry’s existing model asks you to operate in ways that conflict with your values. About how to build something durable when you are doing it without a blueprint.
What I wanted Behind the Build to be, from the beginning, was the series I wished had existed when I started. Each post goes beyond strategy to address what the frameworks leave out; the fear, the doubt, the gap between what you planned and what actually happens, and the version of yourself the work requires you to become. I write about all of it as a Black woman who made a deliberate career pivot after 40, entering an industry that was not built with me in mind and has not historically made space for people who look like me.
I wrote it for founders, career pivoters, corporate baddies, and anyone building something real in a space that was not designed for them.
Behind the Build is a body of work from XIII Collective inclusive of the 30·60·90 Day Plan and The Transferable Skills Guide; all built on the same belief: that the people who need this information most deserve to have it clearly, honestly, and without the hype.
Subscribe to my Substack to get access to Behind The Build.
xoxo,
Starr